Aiming to curb fake news, Facebook-owned platform WhatsApp on Monday announced it has globally lowered to five the forward limit for chats -- a feature first launched in India last July.

"Starting today, WhatsApp will be implementing this change, globally i.e. all users on the latest versions of WhatsApp can now forward to only five chats at once," the Facebook-owned platform said in a blog post.

Earlier, the company allowed users globally to forward messages for up to 20 chats (either individuals or groups).

"The new change will continue to help keep WhatsApp focused on private messaging with close contacts," it added.

With the Indian government talking tough on WhatsApp's failure to check the spread of fake and provocative content on its platorm, the instant messaging service last year rolled out its forward message limit to five chats for over 200 million users in the country.

In one of its notices, the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) said WhatsApp has been requested to come out with more effective solutions that can bring in accountability and facilitate enforcement of law in addition to their efforts towards labelling forwards and identifying fake news.

The IT Ministry had also asked WhatsApp to ensure that the platform is not used for malafide activities over the growing instances of lynching of innocent people owing to large number of irresponsible messages filled with rumours.

In August, Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told the visiting WhatsApp CEO Chris Daniels to comply with the Indian laws and take "suitable" steps to prevent misuse of the instant messaging platform in the country.

Daniels' meeting with the IT Minister came against the backdrop of several incidents of mob lynching being linked to the circulation of fake messages and misinformation on the instant messaging platform.

After being pulled up by the Supreme Court for not appointing a Grievance Officer and complying with other laws of India, WhatsApp in September appointed Komal Lahiri as the Grievance Officer for the country.

Based out of WhatsApp's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, Lahiri can be contacted via email and general post.

Facebook is set to launch a petitions feature called "Community Actions" that will let users request change from their local and national elected officials and government agencies.

According to a report in TechCrunch late Sunday, "Community Actions" will be a petition feature in Facebook's News Feed and reach users in the US on Tuesday and other markets later.

"Users can add a title, description, and image to their 'Community Action', and tag relevant government agencies and officials who'll be notified," the report added.

Supporters for any given petition will be able to discuss the topic with fellow supporters, creating events and fundraisers.

However, the "Community Actions" feature could also provide "vocal interest groups a bully pulpit from which to pressure politicians and bureaucrats with their fringe agendas".

According to a Facebook spokesperson, "Community Action" is another way for people to advocate for changes in their communities and partner with elected officials and government agencies on solutions.

Since bad actors can misuse such features, Facebook will use "a combination of user flagging, proactive algorithmic detection, and human enforcers," to safeguard the "Community Action" feature from falling into wrong hands.

"There are some limits already: users can't tag President Donald Trump or Vice President Mike Pence," said another report in The Verge.

Facebook on Sunday said it will create an independent Institute for Ethics in Artificial Intelligence (AI) with an initial grant of $7.5 million.

In collaboration with the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in Germany, the institute will help advance the growing field of ethical research on new technology and will explore fundamental issues affecting the use and impact of AI.

"The institute will conduct independent, evidence-based research to provide insight and guidance for society, industry, legislators and decision-makers across the private and public sectors," said Joaquin Quinonero Candela, Director, Applied Machine Learning, at Facebook.

The institute will address issues that affect the use and impact of AI, such as safety, privacy, fairness and transparency.

"At the TUM Institute for Ethics in Artificial Intelligence, we will explore the ethical issues of AI and develop ethical guidelines for the responsible use of the technology in society and the economy," said Professor Dr Christoph Lutge.

The institute will also benefit from Germany's position at the forefront of the conversation surrounding ethical frameworks for AI "including the creation of government-led ethical guidelines on autonomous driving" and its work with European institutions on these issues.

The Age of Information that set in with the success of IT revolution some three decades ago pushed the world economy and cross-border human interactions up in a transformational manner and established globalisation as a new reality.

It has facilitated a phenomenal rise of businesses in terms of both products and services and created many positive socio-political trends. There is a new level of global competitiveness in business that is good for customers and a new kind of power of communication in the hands of citizens that forced transparency of governance, making it difficult for dictators to politically survive for long.

It is the destructive side of the use of cyber space, however, that is beginning to show up more and more -- at the level of individuals, organisations and nations -- and clearly converting even the social media into a weapon of perception management, political combat and proxy wars.

In India, the Twitter campaign that was designed to show that the Modi regime had created an atmosphere of intolerance towards the minorities, the orchestrated criticism of the government for creating a 'surveillance state' following an order of the MHA authorising the Intelligence agencies to scan any computer resource for reasons connected to national security and the escalation of the Pakistani ISI's proxy war against India through the clandestine use of social media for radicalising Muslim youth in Kashmir and elsewhere, illustrate this point.

It is a welcome feature of the new age we live in that leaders of the government and those in the opposition take to social media for reaching out to the people to explain their stand on issues of the day.

US President Donald Trump uses Twitter to an amazing degree for announcing his foreign and domestic policies and issuing rejoinders to his critics. This is also now a part of electoral politics that depends heavily on perception management.

In India, political propaganda is being made on social media even in disregard of the prohibitory provisions of the IT Act -- now under adjudication -- that punished calls for violence, inflammatory pronouncements having the potential of creating communal disharmony and statements insulting the national flag. Though the dividing line between what is gross and abusive on the one hand and suave and convincing on the other, has thinned out as far as the political discourse is concerned, use of the power of social media has now become a significant factor in India's electoral battles -- resort to 'fake news' notwithstanding.

The concept of influencing the will or behaviour of adversaries is not new and is now being practised with full vigour across the world because it is a low-cost option also for targeting masses or voters in an election. Citizens are now increasingly impacted to shape the outcome of elections and to pressure their governments to change policies.

Social media is a means of raising the people's voice, which is fine, but more often than not, it is now used as a tool for motivated campaigns of vested interests within or outside of the country. The Indian government has been compelled, in recent times, to have close scrutiny of the NGOs suspected of precisely doing this and examine their funding and links to safeguard national security and integrity.

In technical terms, the aggregated data, when processed through advanced algorithms can reveal significant material for perception management. 'Influence operations' exploit emotional vulnerabilities. Political parties, and even external forces, use social media platforms for circulation of misinformation and even fake videos to create apprehensions, manipulate perceptions and mould public opinion.

Parties are now going beyond the old practice of 'bribing' voters to use technology of data firms and services on hire for targeting communities on social media so as to tilt voting behaviour in their favour. They use analysis to decide what the focal points of their campaign should be.

Cyber-enabled operations are now an integral part of Information Warfare. A planned effort to use technologies and devices is made not only to steal the target's data for monetisation, which is a part of competitive business today, but also for pursuing hostile missions such as degrading the target's systems to deny the advantage of information to the latter and planting manipulated information to elicit a particular response on selected issues.

There are increasing incidents of data breaches in India. Some three million records were stolen, lost or exposed in the country in 2017 -- a whopping increase over what happened in 2016 while in 2018 millions of records were believed to have been compromised in the Aadhaar breach alone.

There are large leakages of data from MNCs. Cambridge Analytica was suspected of having harnessed data of millions of Facebook users, of which Indians were a significant segment. The firm reportedly leveraged them for political campaigns. Its parent company reportedly had links with British Intelligence agencies. Similarly, Microsoft is said to have routinely shared the financial details of Indian bank customers with Intelligence agencies in the US - the Reserve Bank of India had reportedly flagged this breach.

Information Warfare has moved towards its combat version -- cyber warfare -- which, in turn, is fast getting integrated with general warfare. Cyber operations are now set to play a decisive role in a military combat. The US has elevated its Cyber Command to the status of what is called the Unified Combatant Command. China has created a Strategic Support Force to provide necessary support to the Chinese Armed Forces during war and protecting Chinese interests in cyber space during non-war periods. Russia has special forces for information warfare. Artificial Intelligence-based cyber weapons are being developed by major powers with the result that Information Warfare is becoming Intelligence Warfare, adding to its surprise element.

In India, strong laws protect the Right to Privacy in the use of social media. The public does not realise, however, that entering cyber space is like being on a public thoroughfare or in a public park where you are completely visible and have no right to demand that people did not see what you were indulging in.

On social media, you should not do what you are not supposed to do -- there would be a legal deterrent in place. The government is also tightening the law for service providers to deter them from passing on personal data for commercialisation. In the Indian context CERT-IN has reported a very large increase in cyber attacks in recent months - more than half of which originated from China and Pakistan.

India's security set-up is seized of the threat posed to our national security by Islamic radicals who are being indoctrinated on social media and the sleeper cells of terrorists who are being funded and logistically supported by their master minds from across our borders through layered communications on line.

In short, social media is as much a tool of progress for the law abiding as it is a weapon of proxy war for our adversaries. Preparing for warfare outside of the battlefield is the new challenge for the nation.

Facebook has redesigned its messaging app -- Messenger -- with a new interface and the update can be downloaded on both Android and iOS devices via Google Play and App Store.

The redesign was first announced at Facebook's F8 developer conference in May 2018 with the idea of making the chat feature simpler and to put messages at the front and centre once again.

Notable features of the redesign include consolidating its nine tabs into just three, introducing more whitespace to the interface and hidden buttons for game, bots and reminder functionalities on the chatbox, The Verge reported on Friday.

Following its announcement in May, the redesign entered a prolonged rollout period in October.

"The company says it might take a little time for the update to be available for everyone," the report added.

Messenger was launched for Facebook users to send messages to one another while they browsed through the social media app on the desktop and in 2014, it was released as an individual mobile app.

Facebook is testing a new app for kids called "LOL" that will let users share and post humorous meme content.

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that it was experimenting with the "LOL" hub for kids.

"We are running a small scale test and the concept is in the early stages right now," the spokesperson said in a statement.

Divided into categories like "For You", "Animals", "Fails" and "Pranks", it will be a special feed of funny videos and GIF-like clips.

"'LOL' is currently in private beta with around 100 high school students who signed non-disclosure agreements with parental consent to do focus groups and one-on-one testing with Facebook staff," said the report.

Facebook-owned photo-sharing app Instagram is very popular among teenagers.

The company last year launched a short-form video app called "Lasso" but the app hasn't gained much popularity.

According to the report, Facebook is yet to decide if "LOL" will become a stand-alone app or be available in the main app.

A bug in Twitter exposed private tweets of some Android users for over five years when they made changes in their settings, like changing the email address linked to their accounts.

According to the micro-blogging platform, the bug (now fixed) disabled the "Protect your Tweets" setting if certain account changes were made on Android devices.

The bug didn't affect people using Twitter on iOS or desktop, Twitter said on Thursday.

"You may have been impacted by this issue if you had protected Tweets turned on in your settings, used Twitter for Android, and made certain changes to account settings such as changing the email address associated with your account between November 3, 2014, and January 14, 2019.

"People on iOS or the web were not impacted. We fixed the issue on January 14, and we'll provide updates if other important information becomes available," Twitter said on its Help page.

The company said it has informed those who were affected by the bug, and has turned "Protect your Tweets" back on for them if it was disabled.

"We encourage you to review your privacy settings to ensure that your aProtect your Tweets' setting reflects your preferences," said Twitter, adding it is sorry that this happened.

In May last year, Twitter asked its 336 million users to change their passwords after it discovered a bug that stored passwords in plain text in an internal system.

Twitter said it found no sign that hackers accessed the exposed data but advised users that they should enter a new password on all services where their current password has been used.

Another bug in Twitter's platform for third-party app developers exposed some Direct Messages (DMs) from nearly 3 million users to outsiders, the micro-blogging platform admitted in September.

The bug ran from May 2017 and after discovering it, Twitter said it fixed the bug to prevent data from being unintentionally sent to the incorrect developer.

Twitter is also facing an investigation by privacy regulators in Ireland over data collection in its link-shortening system.

Micro-blogging platform Twitter has rolled out the reverse-chronological timeline for Android smartphone users that would enable them to switch to the timeline view of their choice.

"Like on iOS, Android users can now switch between seeing top tweets and the latest tweets first by tapping the sparkle icon on the top right corner of the app," The Verge reported on Tuesday.

This was Twitter's traditional timeline-viewing choice for users until four years ago when it decided to switch to an algorithm-based viewing, in an attempt to experiment with how best to display feeds to users on its platform.

The feature was long-awaited by users who preferred to use Twitter for its original function of keeping up with live events in real time, the report added.

The optional feature was first brought back to iOS users earlier in December and is yet to be released for web.

Facebook has announced to invest over $300 million over the next three years to support local news organisations.

In a blog post, Campbell Brown, Vice President, Global News Partnerships, said that Facebook wants to support local journalists and newsrooms with their news gathering needs in the immediate future and help these organisations build sustainable business models, through both its product and partnership work.

"We heard one consistent answer: people want more local news, and local newsrooms are looking for more support. That's why today we're announcing an expanded effort around local news in the years ahead," Brown said late on Tuesday.

In 2018, Google also committed $300 million for over three years to strengthen quality journalism, support sustainable business models and empower newsrooms through technological innovation.

It was also committing to spend $300 million over the next three years on its various journalism-related projects.

According to Facebook, it would invest $300 million in news programmes, partnerships and content.

Among the components is a Pulitzer Centre -- a $5 million endowment gift to launch "Bringing Stories Home", a gift that will provide local newsrooms across the US with reporting grants to foster coverage on topics that affect local communities.

"Report for America" is a $2 million investment in the initiative to place 1,000 journalists in local newsrooms across America over the next five years.

"This year, we'll commit over $20 million to continue our local 'Accelerator' programme in the US and to expand the model globally, including in Europe," said Brown.